Isiah 40:4
states that “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall
be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places
plain” and I wish this applied to Question 2 because the pro-charter side could
be made a bit straighter. Recently a new committee filed with OCPF calling itself Advancing Obama's
Legacy on Charter Schools Ballot Committee. It’s a front for Dark Money
Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts of New York, but since DFER is a
front for hedge fund billionaires behind Education Reform Now, why create a
front for a front? Or why can’t the crooked be made straight, and the rough
places plain?

Advancing
Obama's Legacy on Charter Schools Ballot Committee of New York
filed on October 17 with Liam Kerr, head of DFER Massachusetts of New York as
chairman. The next day Mr. Kerr was replaced by political consultant Frank
Perullo, former channeler
of Alice Walton’s WalMart inheritance. But then on October 25 Mr. Kerr was
back as spokesman for Obama’s Legacy announcing that the group would spend
$500,000.00 to shore up sinking support among Democrats.

Who speaks for the Democrats: Democrats for Education Reform,
or the Democrats? Mr. Kerr says that both President Obama and Hillary Clinton
favor charters, though he doesn’t note that neither of them has taken any
position on Question 2. On the other side, the Democratic State Committee and
many prominent leaders including Senator Elizabeth Warren oppose Question 2. There
is a cleavage in the Democratic Party, one addressed recently by David Shribman
in Democrats-the
party of the professional class?

The key tension described by Shribman is that the Democratic
Party’s historical identity is as “the defender of rank-and-file workers.” But
today the party courts the rise of “a new professional class that is progressive
on social issues” but distant from labor, and this is occurring as labor’s long
slide continues. Some party leaders applaud the electoral benefit of moving
away from the working class and toward well-educated suburban whites, while
retaining a base minority voters. But that movement is undergoing a significant
push back, including from senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. To stay
within our Massachusetts circle, nothing tops this quote from former Governor
Michael Dukakis:

We have
badly neglected the work we should have been doing for blue-collar working
folks, especially men. There’s no excuse for that. These are our people. They
have no business voting Republican. But you have got to take care of people and
pay attention to them.

Here is the point Shribman did not emphasize: the professional
class Democratic Party is dismissing lower class folks without the money to
make campaign contributions in favor of professional class people who give copiously.

Except there is one organized group of working class
Americans that does make political contributions: union members. And while conservative Republicans have been
waging a war on unions for years – most of the untold millions behind Great
Schools Massachusetts of New York is Republican – it’s an irony that the
historical backbone of the Democratic Party now is under assault from moneyed Democrats.

DFER has been willing to spend extravagantly to defeat
pro-labor Democrats with free market Democrats (though replacing free market Republicans
with Democrats, not so much). This is the sort of thing that ambitious
Democratic office seekers notice.

Democratic Wall Street whales may be progressive on social issues
but they are less enthused with income inequality. That’s the old Democratic Party. So
when Professor Sarah Reckhow writes of wealthy charter school backers as
“Boardroom Progressives” she makes a point that Shribman would understand.

It’s just another deviation in the dark money story, where
the roads are always crooked and are rarely made straight.

Louis D. Brandeis: "We must make our choice. We may have democracy,
or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have
both."

[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union
member.I write about dark money, and not charter schools. I've never
written about charter schools, nor taken a position on them. I have taken a
position against plutocracy and in favor of democracy, and thus against dark
money.]